What's Hidden Under Antarctica?

Something's hiding below the ice in Antarctica….
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In 1970, a team of Soviet scientists started drilling. For 28 years, they kept going… until after nearly 4,000 meters… they suddenly stopped. Because they’d found something unimaginable: Liquid water. A secret lake, down below all this ice, that had been completely sealed off from the rest of the world for 15 million years.

How? And… is there something alive in there? Creatures that have been evolving separately from the rest of the planet for 15 million years?

Scientists started searching for more of these secret lakes, and as they did, they realized there is way more going on under Antarctica than we ever thought.

I needed to know the truth about Earth’s most remote continent. So I've come all the way to Antarctica to show you what's really happening down below this ice. And exactly what they discovered when they finally broke inside…

Chapters:
00:00 What’s hiding under Antarctica?
01:50 How thick is the ice in Antarctica?
2:30 What if you dig a hole into Antarctica?
4:13 What’s inside a crevasse?
4:56 How do we know what’s under the ice?
6:24 What if you go deeper?
07: 18 How old is the ice under Antarctica?
10:33 Why are there lakes under Antarctica's ice?
13:31 How can we study the subglacial lakes?
15:19 Did we find new life under Antarctica?
16:52 Can research in Antarctica help us find aliens in space?
17:41 What don’t we know?
18:12 What's next?
18:22 :)

Special thanks to Dr. Steven Chown, Rebecca Warne and all of the amazing guides from the White Desert Foundation leading Science Week .

You can find me on Instagram here: https://www.instagram.com/cleoabram
On TikTok here: https://www.tiktok.com/@cleoabram
Or on Twitter here: https://twitter.com/cleoabram

Bio:
Cleo Abram is an Emmy-nominated independent video journalist. On her show, HUGE* If True, Cleo explores complex technology topics with rigor and optimism, helping her audience understand the world around them and see positive futures they can help build. Before going independent, Cleo was a video producer for Vox. She wrote and directed the Coding and Diamonds episodes of Vox’s Netflix show, Explained. She produced videos for Vox’s popular YouTube channel, was the host and senior producer of Vox’s first ever daily show, Answered, and was co-host and producer of Vox’s YouTube Originals show, Glad You Asked.

Additional reading and watching:
- History on the drilling into Lake Vostok: https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/annals-of-glaciology/article/deep-drilling-at-vostok-station-antarctica-history-and-recent-events/8DA18E684DD19E80E7D02F2FBD2DFA26
- Drilling into Lake Ellsworth: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/antarcticas-subglacial-lake-ellsworth-will-keep-its-secrets-for-now-75/
- WISSARD (Lake Whillans) drilling project: https://www.montana.edu/priscu/research/current/wissard-summary.html, https://astrobiology.nasa.gov/news/antarcticas-subglacial-lakes-support-prospects-for-life-on-icy-moons/
- SALSA (Lake Mercer) drilling project: https://today.ucsd.edu/story/researchers-extract-first-layered-lake-sediment-sample-from-subglacial-antarctica.
- Beyond EPICA and Million year Ice Core Projects: https://www.beyondepica.eu/en/, https://www.antarctica.gov.au/science/climate-processes-and-change/antarctic-palaeoclimate/million-year-ice-core/
- Bedmap data from the British Antarctic Survey: https://bedmap.scar.org/
- The Polar Regions: https://nsidc.org/home, https://www.antarctica.gov.au/about-antarctica/
- Helen Fricker’s work + NASA’s ICESat tools: https://icesat-2.gsfc.nasa.gov/, https://today.ucsd.edu/story/uc-san-diego-led-science-team-selected-for-nasa-satellite-mission, https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.1136897
- John Priscu's research on the Lake Vostok’s accretion ice: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.286.5447.2141
- What's Hidden Under the Ice of Antarctica? (Real Life Lore): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KOnB47PyZJw
- What’s Really Under Antarctica’s Ice (PBS Terra): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k7AzHDaTHHo
- What’s Under Antarctica’s Ice? (SciShow): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xn9DWKSiqGQ
- “The Lake at the Bottom of the World” (Documentary on Lake Mercer + SALSA Project): https://www.antarcticlakefilm.com/

Vox: https://www.vox.com/authors/cleo-abram
IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/name/nm10108242/

Gear I use:
Camera: Sony A7SIII
Lens: Sony 16–35 mm F2.8 GM
Audio: Sennheiser SK AVX and Zoom H4N Pro

Music: Musicbed, Tom Fox

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—
Hey, welcome to the joke down low!

Why do polar bears and penguins not get on?
Because they are polar opposites!

Find a way to use “penguin” in a comment to let me know you’re a real one who made it to the end of the description :)